Thinking Through Winter

I have a strong affection for winter, for its short days and low sun. I do not like the Central California summer, which is relentless.

During the week this time of year, I am at the office well before sunrise. The building is quiet, and if the lights are still on from the day before, I switch off all that I can before sitting in my cubicle.

A couple of weeks ago I spent two nights in a tent in Yosemite Valley's Camp 4. I set my tent on the snow, rigged up a warm mattress constructed of an old sleeping bag and a leaky Thermarest. For a couple of days I hiked around the Valley and enjoyed fresh air, tired legs, and the post-Christmas respite from all things ordinary. I got to see a wild bobcat for the first time, as well as a healthy coyote and several deer. The last time I was in Yosemite was in September, when I sometimes enjoyed a strenuous backpacking trip that, a few days in, found me unable to either eat or sleep enough to maintain a normal level of energy.

The day before yesterday I drove up to the mountains and spent several hours of skiing in the backcountry. I encountered nobody, and I had the trees to myself. At several points I stopped to enjoy the falling snow. 

For about the last month I have had my evenings and weekends to do pretty much as I please: no classes to teach or take, no students to call, no papers to grade. In a couple of weeks I once again start teaching: two nights a week, two hours a night. I am trying to gird my mental self for the increased activity, but the thought of 30 students staring up from their seats causes me no small amount of anxiety.

I will also be taking a guitar class, basically the same course I took last semester but am allowed to repeat at least a few times. I am not a good guitar player, nor will I ever be. But I am better than I once was, and being a student again will help me (I hope) be a better teacher. Many of my students are afraid of writing, really, just as I am afraid of playing my guitar in class. I am hopeful that I am developing a bit of empathy for those who truly do fear having to write. For one Christmas when I was a kid, I asked for a guitar, and what showed up on Christmas morning was a cheap plastic thing that I treasured. Mike, an older neighbor who would end up having quite the dark side, once offered to sell me his electric guitar for $100. I balked, one of many decisions that I have regretted. If I'd started playing then, even with this fat, meaty hands I'd be a much better player than I am.

For Christmas this year I asked for and received a box of Blackwing 602 pencils and a new Rhodia notebook, requests that befuddled more than one person. With these pencils and in this notebook I have begun writing the newest tome (mentioned in in a not-so-old blog post), an exercise in futility and creativity that I'm hopeful to make habitual.

I have told my students for many years that they, too, must practice their writing, that it will get easier and they will get better if they just stick with it, no matter how fat and meaty their hands are.

Sharps and Flats

My first guitar was a plastic thing I got for Christmas when I was really young. I was joyful even though I had no idea of what I was doing with the thing. A couple of years later, Steve, a neighbor who was my older sister's age, offered to sell me his white electric guitar for $100, but for some reason I chickened out. I regret not buying that guitar, and thought it's a different story, there are things I regret about Steve, too.

I don't have good fingers or hands for a guitar: too fat and uncoordinated, and somewhat hindered now by arm surgery I had about 10 years ago. I had good fingers for the coronet when I played in the school band a long time ago, but I had to use only fingers. That made things easier, though I never could get my lips to hit that high C with any consistency. I probably should have gone with the tuba.

One morning I got out of bed and put my foot right through that plastic guitar, and that was the end of things until I bought a classical guitar in Pensacola, Florida. I had to walk from the navy base to the music store, then had to dash back to my room when the rain started, carrying that new guitar the entire way. I still have this guitar though I don't play it because a few years ago I ponied up some cash and got a regular acoustic guitar, a Seagull, which sounds really nice when other people play it. Last year I got an electric guitar, a nice Fender Stratocaster, something that my fingers don't work well on but that does make a lot of nice noise.

Recently, in an attempt to re-make certain parts of me, I signed up for a beginning guitar class through the local school district's adult education program. Though I spend time with the Seagull and the Stratocaster each day, I thought I might as well learn a little--maybe even learn an entire song. We met for the first time last Saturday, and when I walked into the room, most of the students were already there, guitars out and gabbing with the instructor. I sat in one of the few available chairs, next to a woman who seemed even less comfortable than I was. "Can you play?" she asked me, and I assured her that I could not.

Some of the students had nice guitars (the woman across from me had a Taylor, which I coveted for 2 full hours), while others had guitars that weren't so nice. Not long after the starting time, I started wondering just what we were in for. The teacher never introduced himself, never asked people their names or what guitar experience they had, and didn't seem organized at all. (Yes, I know--I need to leave my teacher side at home.) He showed his own guitar skills a few times, and at one point the woman next to me whispered, "Oh, look at me!" Ha ha ha.

After a few exercises, the teacher went through the strings, and I was happy when nobody laughed when he said "put your finger on the G-string." Because, well, there was so much temptation for us to laugh at what the perpetual adolescents among us were thinking. He quickly began showing us basic chords (G, C, D). "Make sure you don't put your fingers right on the frets," he said once, which was lost on the woman beside me because nobody had told her what a fret is. Later, the teacher assured us that we were "an advanced class" because we'd learned to play 3 chords in just 2 hours, which is pretty much a bunch of hooey. He'd walk around the room and listen to us, but he wouldn't spend any time with the people who were struggling with theory and/or mechanics. So, while he walked and talked, I concentrated on helping the woman next to me, showing her where to put her fingers, how to bend her wrist, and how to strum the chords. She was frustrated. I was frustrated. At one point the teacher stopped in front of her to see how she was doing, and I told him that she was still trying to figure out the fingering and the frets. He then just moved on (without checking on me), which didn't make the woman too happy. "Oh, just walk away," she muttered.

I wanted to tell the guy: "How can you teach a class if you don't know anything about the students? How can you tell us a note is sharp or flat if we don't know what those terms mean? How can you tell us how to use the guitar if we don't even know all of the guitar's parts?"

Whew. That was fun.

In the end, the woman was vocally thankful that I'd spent some time with her, but I wasn't necessarily happy that I'd helped her, which sounds terrible. Actually, I wasn't happy with the instructor, who before we left admonished us to tune our guitars before our next meeting, to do our homework exercises, and to come to class prepared. This week I'll have to make a decision: do I sit beside the same woman so I can help her, or do I sit somewhere else and concentrate on the lesson itself so I can learn something more than I already know?

I had plans on taking an advanced class, but, apparently, I won't have to.

Reading, Writing, and a Little Arithmetic

Many times in this so-called blog I have discussed or alluded to teaching, an avocation that is showing signs of having run its course. I am old, and old people need their rest. Neither wise as a man nor gifted as a teacher, I sometimes now stand in front of my students and think that they would be better off elsewhere. Regardless, I continue to sign up for the teaching gigs, so I've got nobody to blame but myself. If my students want to blame someone, they can talk to the academic adviser who stuck them with me.

Most of my teaching has taken place at a large, privately owned university that, at its inception, was geared toward professional adults who quite often needed a college degree to move up the corporate ladder. The students had to be at least 23 years old. They had to be employed. They were expected to behave professionally in the classroom. As an instructor, these 3 requirements made my life easier, for the students were dedicated to their educations and didn't complain when they had a lot of schoolwork to complete.

But, when the university ran out of this type of student, they lowered the age requirement to 21, and the students no longer had to be employed. Not long afterward, I suppose when all the 21-year-old customers were gone, the age got lowered to 18. Today, much of the student population is, it seems to me, rather unmotivated. Of course, we always remember the outliers, the worst examples and the best. Students at this university take only one course at a time, and the course itself lasts just 5 weeks. Still, I hear many complaints about how difficult it is to write, I don't know, a 1,200-word essay while at the same time doing the required reading. Years ago I would show my empathy and say, "Yes, I understand how busy your lives are, but I think you can do it." Now, I'm more apt to say, "Imagine that--college is difficult."

I am old, and I am cranky.

In a couple of days I begin teaching a literature course for this university, which is a nice change from the composition courses I have worked through lately. Most of the students' material at this school is provided online, but a physical textbook is required for this course. So, being diligent, a couple of weeks ago I sent an email to the students to remind them to buy the book, that they will not succeed in the course

All Those Faces

In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki wrote that "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." As with the start of every new semester, my mind tends toward the beginner, the person who is optimistic and energetic, the teacher who hopes to transmit at least a bit of helpful knowledge to those who seek it. I see similar minds in many of my students, as well--a willingness to attend class, to complete assignments. More than a few of these students, certainly, are there because the course is required by one entity or another, and that is fine. I have, though, violated many possible rules by telling students that if they are there because their parents told them they had to be, they should go home. Stupid, yes.

I sinned early this semester by allowing too many people into my course, so many that a few must sit on the floor in a room that is cramped and stuffy. I am not sure why I made the choice I did--and it certainly was a choice--but the first day of class I looked out over the crowd of students and felt a certain sense of compassion (something that people who know me might say is an anomaly): so many funding cuts, so few classes open or available, so many students needing "just this class" to move on to somewhere else.

A price will be paid later in the semester, of course. By me, mostly: all those essays and exams to grade. During those nights I an staring at a stack of 4-page papers, I will think, "That beginner's mind needs help."